“Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.”

“Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

“The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”

Desmond Morris book The Human Zoo

“Well sure, who doesn't need a boyfriend? but realistically, those exotic creatures are hard to come by. At least a quality one.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

“Children are only terrified of invisible ghosts. But some human beings are just as terrible as these creatures.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

“To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

“Our desire to conserve wildlife for our children and our children's children forces us to bring out into the open conservation's secret question : Does God give a prize for the maximum number of human beings? Put another way, which shall we bequeath to our grandchildren : human life with nature, or human life without nature?”

Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) American ecologist

“Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.”

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

“I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director